


Dear Lup

by BlueMoonHound



Series: no halo [3]
Category: The Adventure Zone (Podcast)
Genre: Angst, Background blupjeans - Freeform, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied Suicide Attempts, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Kinda, Suicidal Ideation, Suicide Notes, lucretia is a mess, neutral or at least non negative ending, or maybe middleground blupjeans. it is relevant, self hate
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-28
Packaged: 2019-03-09 10:35:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 7,504
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13479705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BlueMoonHound/pseuds/BlueMoonHound
Summary: DearLup.I have had time to come to terms with your disappearance, and in leu of that, have decided to begin addressing my journal entries to you, rather than to some amorphus, nonexistent being into which all writing is consumed. And so, to you this is dedicated, and from now on, all my entries in this jounal- this first person, chronological account of my emotion and experience, this essay, this attempt- I will write while thinking of you.I have a plan now, Lup, to save the world. To do what you attempted. Many things will be forgotten, you may even forget them yourself. But I will not let you be forgotten, no trace of you wiped from my mind. I will not let your legacy end with a simple 'back soon'.





	1. The letters

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please mind that this chapter reads a bit like a suicide note near the end.

_Dear_ _L_ _up._  
I have had time to come to terms with your disappearance, and in lieu of that, have decided to begin addressing my journal entries to you, rather than to some amorphous, nonexistent being into which all writing is consumed. And so, to you this is dedicated, and from now on, all my entries in this journal- this first person, chronological account of my emotion and experience, this essay, this attempt- I will write while thinking of you.

I have a plan now, Lup, to save the world. To do what you attempted. Many things will be forgotten, you may even forget them yourself. But I will not let you be forgotten, no trace of you wiped from my mind. I will not let your legacy end with a simple 'back soon'.

This afternoon, I am going to give all my records to Fisher. I have removed names – Taako, Lup, Barry, Magnus, Merle, Davenport, even Lucretia – from the records. I don't want those to be lost. I hope to spend a year gathering the relics, though I don't have faith it will be that easy. It's a wish upon a wish.

_2._

Magnus walked in on me. It was ~~scary~~ frustrating.

I now have

I have a big job to do, Lup.

I don't know if I'll sleep tonight. This is a problem because I haven't slept at all for many days. I feel like I am falling to pieces, but that's alright. Take deep breaths, keep walking. We know the drill, do we not? I wonder where you are, and whether you remember that cycle now. Sometimes the best alone is together.

My head is foggy. Perhaps I will lie down. Maybe I should drink some, it might help me pass out. I need to be at top performance tomorrow. I need to be ready to deliver the crew to their new homes.

Gods almighty.

I hope to write soon.

 

_Dear lup:_

Davenport is

I'm so sorry

He's, well, ~~br~~

Not sapient any longer. Or perhaps he is. I can't quite tell. I can't read his mind. He can't talk, Lup.

I've made mistakes.

 

_Dear Lup._

I found the bulwark staff. I'm making progress, quicker than I would have expected. Perhaps this is just because I know my staff so well. As soon as it was back in my hands it was singing. I may have cried. The voice of the Bulwark staff is gorgeous, Lup. Have you ever heard her? She's gorgeous. I love her with all my heart.

She's like a daughter to me.

I hired a young man named Johann to look after Fisher. His songs are beautiful. He's calm, Lup. He seems to know everything about music.

He calls Fisher the Voidfish. I like it. Fisher certainly is a void fish.

 

_Dear Lup._

Did you know what a mess your boyfriend is? His relic is terrifying. I had to run away, Lup. I couldn't stay. I'm sorry, again. I'm

I'm back. Sorry I had to leave. Sometimes one is just too overwhelmed with emotion for rational writing. I suppose I am a bit of an unreliable narrator, am I not?

There's this place called Wonderland, I was looking for the Animus bell when I went in. It's run by a couple of elves who are probably liches. They play a suffering game with visitors to their wonderland. I lost quite a few things, Lup. Not as much as my companion lost, but then again, I am a coward. I am a coward who wipes the thoughts of all her friends so she can selfishly take control of a mission that isn't hers. Lup, I took away all of the captain's sense of self, I stripped him of coherence. Taako's cooking show is going fine. Magnus is getting married. Gods know where Barry is. Merle's living on the beach. He's already married? He has a daughter now. I'm having trouble picturing Merle with children.

I'm rambling, aren't I?

Anyway. I look different now. I bargained twenty years of my life away in Wonderland. I'm a fifty year old woman, Lup. I look older than you do. I mean, I have no idea what you look like now, but elves age so much slower than humans anyway. Twenty years to you or Taako would mean nothing at all. It means a lot to me, though. I'm not Ellen DeGeneres.

I'm sure my poor habits contribute to the amount of youthfulness I lost to the siblings in wonderland. They're siblings, by the way, Lup. They look like they might be twins. Such a ridiculous thought, because it makes me think of you and Taako. You and Taako are nothing like Edward and Lydia. I love you so much, Lup. I wish you were here.

 

_Dear Lup._

I had a nightmare last night where I had to press the button in wonderland and abandon you. You and the rest of the crew. I really didn't want to press the button, but I couldn't stop it. My hand moved on its own. It was a shit dream.

I woke up at three A. M. My whole back hurts. I guess that comes with old age? Luckily, my legs seem to be completely functional. My staff helps a lot with this. I'm in my fifties, now, Lup! It's absolutely bananas.

My ingrown toenail is hurting again. I had some rice for breakfast. I started putting pistachios in my gorp again, remember that? I still think it tastes good. I miss the looks Taako used to give me for chewing through Pistachio shells. I suppose I shouldn't miss feeling smug, but I miss feeling smug anyway. It was amusing and I miss you. You never gave me that look. You always laughed. But then, you were always more charismatic than Taako is.

I've been working very hard. I have some leads on the next relics, but I'm taking a break from pursuing those. Wonderland bit me in the ass. The rest of you would have been much better at this job. You're all so confident.

_2._

Davenport made me tea today.

I thanked him. Later, I cried.

 

_Dear Lup._

I'm making a moonbase. I'm going to live on the moon. Isn't that simply absurd?

I feel like I need to be up in the sky, again. I've been having nightmares about being stuck planetside when the hunger comes, and gods know if the hunger will even come this cycle, but I'm frightened anyway.

Plus, the starblaster is rather hard to hide, and I need a better place for it. I met a family who can do this for me. They're the Millers, and they have a strangely vast understanding of the world and science. I'm frankly a bit suspicious of them. I wonder where they got their hands on this information and how they plan to use it. I don't push the issue when it comes up, though, because this is my best chance of getting what I need in terms of architecture. Plus, Maureen is cute.

I've also finally figured out how to make cheese. You have no idea how relieved I am, Lup! Cheese! I can make grilled cheese again.

I miss Taako. I wish I could have him here, like back on the starblaster. I wish any of you were here. Making new bonds is hard, and I feel so lost without you.

I don't know, maybe I would feel lost anyway. It's very easy to lose oneself in times like these. I hope you're doing alright, wherever you are.

Love you,  
Lucretia.

 

_Dear Lup._

I've taken on the title of Madam Director. It feels so professional. I've been hiring a lot lately, and I figured I should be professional. I've also warned Johann away from using my first name. It's banned. No more Lucretia. I'm a new woman.

More or less, I think I'm ashamed of my past. I think it happens to the best of us. Are you ashamed of any part of your past? I'm sure there's something, we're all ashamed of something. Or at least, I want to believe that. I'm often wrong. I find my wrongness is deeper than the marrow in my bones.

I'm calling my secret organization the Bureau of Balance.

 

_Dear Lup._

Things are not working out. Everyone dies. I can't go back, Lup! You know I can't, right? I'd be hurt, I'd die. I can't afford to die, not this time. Plus, every time I think about wonderland I feel nauseous and my hands shake, just like cycle 65.

Speaking of cycle 65, being up in the sky certainly isn't helping things. It's nice to have something like my old bedroom back, but I find myself wandering out in the wind and almost jumping off the edge of the base. I'm having terrible nightmares. We all have nightmares, that's just a fact of life, but nightmares and hallucinations and sleepwalking don't work well together. Waking up hyperventilating on the campus is not appropriate for someone of my position. 

I've been sleeping a lot less as a result.

 

_Dear Lup._

Fisher had a baby.

I took it away, tested a few things.

Poor fisher keened. I feel terrible, but I must. I _must_ , just like with everything else. Besides, if anyone else finds out about the baby voidfish, they might have questions.

I can use the second voidfish to hire on the boys. By which I mean, Magnus, Merle, Barry, and Taako. Did you know they're mercenaries now? They found each other. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised, but I am anyway. I can feed the journals of the century to the baby voidfish and still tell them about the relic war. They can probably handle the relics without succumbing, just as I have with my staff. We'll see. I'll set something up.

There might be issues with Barry being a lich, but he was always a clutz, so maybe he'll die just like the last fifty billion times he's gotten anywhere close to cracking your code. He still hasn't found you, Lup. I know he's looking. I have half a mind to give him his memories as a mortal man, since he has them anyway as a lich. Then again, I put up a field around the moonbase so I wouldn't have to deal with him, so that might be kind of hard.

I make things too difficult for myself.

Anyway, it feels good to have a voidfish in my bedroom again. I missed that with an intensity I wasn't aware of.

Fisher will be fine.

 

_Dear Lup._

Barry's dead, again, unfortunately. Or at least, that's what it sounds like – I brought the boys up to work for me and he wasn't there, all of Phandalin was glassed, too. Your relic is a bit of a menace. Then again, almost all of ours are. Mine and Barry's-- we didn't do quite as widespread damage, but damage was much more intense where it happened.

The animus bell can kick a soul out of its body. Barry thought it was just a jacked up cantrip but he was very, very wrong.

I'm going to have to pretend I know nothing about it, aren't I? I don't want to scare the boys away from the job. That one is last, though, for obvious reasons. One of them could die. One of them could lose an arm or an eye or something else so important to them. I'm not ready to face that, and I'm not ready to put them through that.

I'm of half a mind to go with them when Wonderland becomes their job.

_2._

Shit, Lup, you're in the umbrella, aren't you? You sure jacked up Taako's spell during the initiation trial. They've lost a lot of power. I took too much away from them, by removing ~~you~~ the century from the equation. Taako also thinks he's an idiot, which worries me. I'll have to do something for his confidence. Something happened to his confidence, planetside. I know he stopped his cooking show, but I'm not sure why.

Predictably, Merle left his family. I'm going to have to make sure he still visits his children. He has a son, too. His daughter was his wife's, his son is his own actual genetic child. I wonder if this ever happened in any of the cycles we left behind.

Magnus's wife is dead. There was some sort of rebellion going on a while back and I'm afraid the two situations are linked. Magnus takes well to mercenary work, but it's obvious he's more sacrificial than he used to be.

I'm going to think you're probably in the umbrella, because the umbrella absorbs magical energy and you, at least when you die, are completely made of magical energy. I wish I could let you out, Lup, but I'm afraid. I'm afraid of how much it might hurt the others. I'm afraid to know how powerful you are. I'm so sorry, Lup. I'm sorry you're stuck here. I'm glad you're back with your brother, though, if nothing else. I hope that helps. I wish he could have you, too.

Imagine if you and Barry were both liches together, out in the world trying to stop me. You're so powerful. I don't know if I could take that from both of you. I don't know how Taako might react if he saw you alive again, either.

If you hadn't disappeared, I don't even know if I would be doing this. I have to carry though, though, Lup. Just because I found you doesn't mean I'm free to give up. I've got to take this plan all the way to the end.

 

_Dear Lup._

I had a panic attack this morning. It wasn't too bad, I took a nap after. Magnus did the thing where he strips down just anywhere without consideration of any possible audience and Taako said something about forgetting. I'm very good at acting, don't worry. They didn't suspect a thing. I don't really remember walking back to my room, but it was fine.

I'm sure they're being absolute doofuses planetside. That's what they do best.

I'm going to eat some rice. Talk to you later.

_2._

Hello again. The boys got the occulus. It was fairly straightforward. I can feel the Bulwark staff getting more powerful as I feed the light to it. I wonder how long it will take for the hunger to find us as I reassemble the light.

Davenport cried today. I cracked open a bottle of wine and we sat down in the little living room we share and had a drink. It was somewhat good.

Maybe I'll sleep tonight.

The staff is singing again.

 

_Dear Lup._

I wonder if you'll hate me.

It's almost midsummer.

I wonder if you'll hate me because I took the thoughts away from the people you care about. I stripped them of their personality, of their identity. I took what was not mine to take and I'm too much of a coward to give it back. I'm so scared that I'll be alone, Lup, if I ever do have the strength to give back what I so selfishly stole.

I have a plan, I have had a plan for a long time. I'm building up the spell more and more each day. And I think, well, I hope I die in the process. It'll make it easier for the rest of you, for sure. You can hate my ghost in peace.

I wanna talk to Magnus. I want to sit next to fisher's tank and talk about little bullshit things like we used to do. I want to do exercises with Magnus in the gym on that one planet. Or even just at the gym on the moonbase. I would feel bad asking that of him, though. It takes so much work just to live here.

I don't want to keep going, Lup. I want to just let it all end here. My soul is tired. I already lived a hundred years more than a human ought to.

Let me rest.

Let me rest let me rest let me rest letmerestletmerest[scribbles]

(there were tearstains on this page.)

 

_Dear Lup._

The hunger is here.

It's so hard to pretend I don't know things, but I need the boys to believe they are unique. I need them to believe that I know as little as they do, and that I'm not as strong.

I asked them what they saw. Of course, they described the hunger.

I threw up in my trashcan this afternoon. I haven't been eating enough. I feel like shit, Lup.

I have to keep doing this. I have to.

Everything's so dark.

We have a year.

Just like old times.

 

_Dear Lup._

I met a young man named Angus. He's been poking into all my business. I think I may recruit him, because I don't know how else to get around his mystery solving and I don't want to kill a ten year old. That's been my day.

 

_Dear Lup._

Lup.

I'm

Hello Lup! How are you? I'm doing fine. I'm doing great! I'm eating regularly and sleeping enough and I don't get nightmares and I never feel like I'm going to pass out, not ever. I'm perfectly fine. Everything's going according to plan! I've never had to watch Merle seduce any plants, not since the century. I'm certainly not drunk right now, and sarcasm never drips from my fingers like the sap from a dying maple tree in spring. I'm not suffocating a little bit. The boys never almost died, not ever. I haven't ever questioned any of my motives for anything. Also, I think it's fine that you're gone! I think it's fine. Just fine. I think the boys met Barry this time?? Taako almost put on Merle's belt.

I'm going to go have a breakdown now. Toodles.

 

_Dear Lup._

I hired the kid.

 

_Dear Lup._

Waking up at 3 AM is normal now. Sometimes I can go back to sleep for an hour or two, but usually I can't. I make sure there's plenty of paperwork to work on. I drink almost every day. It's unhealthy.

I can't believe it's been almost half a year since midsummer. I can't believe it's almost candlenights. I'm falling to pieces, Lup, I can't wait for this to just be done with.

 

_Dear Lup._

I don't know why I write anymore. I hate writing. I hate it and I hate it and I hate it. I hate my hands. I want to cut them off. I want to cut out my tongue and sew my mouth shut and then cut off my hands. I'll put my bracer on my leg. I want to [word scribbled out so thoroughly it cannot be read.]

 

_Dear Lup._

Sorry about yesterday. I wasn't in a good place.

 

_Dear Lup._

The boys sure know how to throw a candlenights party. We found the Philosopher's stone today, one of my friends had it. He's dead, now. I feel really shitty about that. It's not like he's any worse than I am. He hasn't done half the terrible things I've done. It's very easy to be swayed by one of the grand relics, and it's hardly his fault that he got ahold of it.

I'm a little upset with him for hiding this information from me, though. Now all the Millers are dead.

This journal is getting closer and closer to full. I've stopped writing such long daily essays, though, like I did at the beginning. Maybe it's okay. I'll have enough room for the rest of ~~the~~ my life.

It's getting harder and harder to take care of myself and Davenport, but it's important that I do both. Especially taking care of the Captain, he comes first. It's the price I pay for my crime, is it not?

I'm exhausted. I'm going to sleep now. I'll see you later, I guess. If I ever see you.

I might die before you're free.

 

_Dear Lup._

Found the temporal chalice. Girl trapped herself in the space of an hour for seven years. Seven is a funny number.

See you later.

 

_Dear Lup._

Taako has a boyfriend. He's a reaper. I talked to him, he seemed seven hells of chill. I'm so tired. I persuaded him to let us live.

He had a lot of questions about Davenport. I answered more of those than I ought to have, but then again, he's dead. I don't have to worry about the static. I told him Davenport was a captain, once, and that I worked for him. That's not too much, right? I told him not to tell Taako. I told him it's a complicated situation and I'm too tired to deal with it all on my own. I mean, I'm not lying. I'm not dealing with it all. I am doing this on my own but I'm not dealing.

Talk to you later.

 

_Dear Lup._

The hunger is here.

It's time.

The boys are in Wonderland. Something happened to them. I'm full of worry and distress.

I hope they come back. I need the bell.

I'm afraid they suspect something.

 

 _Dear Lup_ , it's the last page of the notebook.

I'm going to leave this notebook on my bed. I hope you find it. It'll say “For Lup” on the cover, so hopefully they'll find it and give it to you. Hopefully someone will have the presence of mind to give it to you. Hopefully someone will realize you're in the umbrella. Give them a sign, for me.

That was a silly thing to say. You can't even hear me.

I'll see you in the astral plane, if you ever go there.

Yours,

Lucretia.

 


	2. Journalkeeping

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She turns her attention to the notebook on the bed. It's old and neat, so it can't have possibly gone everywhere with Lucretia but she's had it at least since the century. Upon further examination, Lup realizes she recognizes the specific notebook – it's a journal she had bought for Lucretia herself, thinking she would appreciate the gesture, a few cycles before the end. The spine is nearly broken now, and the little silver inlays are starting to wear out.
> 
> The cover says, _For Lup_.
> 
> She opens to page one.

In the deep breath after the fight is over, Lup explores. She's heard many places that her family has been in the last decade, but never seen them. Curiosity has a certain drive to it.

“Do you want me to go with you?” Barry had asked. She had a feeling he'd wanted to keep her company, but company isn't what Lup needs right now. She needs to process things.

“Nah, babe, I'm good. I'll see ya this – later? I guess. Shouldn't take that long.”

“Don't wander too far,” He says, tone serious but eyes twinkling. She wacks his head. She won't.

The moonbase is a ghost of what it once was. A few survivors putter around. Lucretia was carted off to the infirmary about an hour ago, after passing out in the Voidfish's chambers. Davenport has been sifting through paperwork and organization in her place, trying to kick his brain back into full gear. She's not sure where the rest are – Magnus and Angus were together, Taako's with his fancy boyfriend, and Barry's still helping reconstruction on planetside. The quad is empty right now, silent but for the whistling of the wind.

She wanders for a little while, exploring the cafeteria, which contains a small group of folks tending to the wounded, the training building, and finally, Lucretia's area. There's a small throne in a large, intimidating dark stone room, which doesn't seem her style but then – if you need to intimidate people, that's definitely one way to gain advantage. She floats through the wall into a corridor that's obviously designed to trap people, and past it.

Lucretia has a small living room behind what's practically a vault door. In the room is an empty tank, presumably once containing Junior. On the far wall, a tiny, dilapidated bed is pushed into the corner, neatly made. A notebook sits on top of it.

If Lup didn't know better, she'd say it was perfectly normal living quarters. But there's no kitchen, only a tiny bathroom with a tiny shower, no windows whatsoever. The walls are metal, probably designed to mimic the walls of the Starblaster. In fact, when Lup floats over to the bed and turns around, she's struck with the feeling that Lucretia designed this space so she felt at home, at least from the angle of her bed.

How bad exactly were Lucy's sleeping problems? She knows she always had some trouble with sleep, especially since cycle 65, but it seems like a lot of work to make something so eerily similar to the ship. Elves are known to act this way, in some places, but humans are supposed to take easy to travel.

She turns her attention to the notebook on the bed. It's old and neat, so it can't have possibly gone everywhere with Lucretia but she's had it at least since the century. Upon further examination, Lup realizes she recognizes the specific notebook – it's a journal she had bought for Lucretia herself, thinking she would appreciate the gesture, a few cycles before the end. The spine is nearly broken now, and the little silver inlays are starting to wear out.

The cover says, _For Lup_.

She opens to page one.

 

_Dear Lup._

 

The interesting thing about the journal, Lup finds, is that it starts out detailing Lucretia's every day – what she ate, how many hours she slept, whether she watched the sunrise and what it looked like. It feels like Lucretia when they last talked, Lucretia from the century, in the beginning. About halfway through the book, though, Lup hits an entry, and many of the day-to-day details stop entirely. The dates on the entries spread farther apart.

 

_Dear Lup._

Did you know what a mess your boyfriend is?

 

In terms of relevance, the entry doesn't feel that far into the book. Lup's been sitting on the bed, flipping pages with a few mage hands, for about an hour now-- only a couple of the previous entries had any juicy information. She knew what was happening, vaguely. “Dear Lup, I'm in the felicity wilds right now. They're gorgeous, and full of so many fascinating and dangerous species.” The next one, “Dear Lup, Cam scolded me for trying to skip breakfast again. He keeps insisting that it's bad for me. I don't think he understands the power of pistachios.”

It stops rather dramatically. It turns from, _Here are the details, sometimes with an emotion_ , to “I am a coward who wipes the thoughts of all her friends so she can selfishly take control of a mission that isn't hers.”

The entry ends with _I love you so much._

Lup almost closes the journal, but something stops her. Something forces her to turn the page again. To read the next Dear Lup.

_Dear Lup._

_I'm back at my cabin. I feel sick._

That's it. She didn't write about going back through the felicity wilds, though it's implied. The next entry is a week later. It talks about a nightmare.

She turns the page again. Keeps reading. A few pages contain something like re-sketched building plans for the moon base, one contains the spell she used to keep it aloft-- an intricate, rather incredible spell she must have spent tons of time creating and expended most of her slots applying. She realizes how much more realistic it is that Lucretia might have created a shell around the hunger from the perspective of this journal. She never uptalks her magical ability, not once, but it's there, painfully obvious, and a little overwhelming. Lucretia's magical skill is beyond anything Lup could have ever guessed.

_Dear Lup._

_I drank a whole bottle of wine today and didn't get drunk. I think I may be an alcoholic._

_Dear Lup._

_I forgot to eat till nine PM today. I guess it doesn't matter, does it?_

_Dear Lup._

_I had a panic attack this morning. It wasn't too bad, I took a nap after._

_Dear Lup._

_I wonder if you'll hate me._

Lup has to pause on this entry, too-- _I wonder if you'll hate me_. Lup is-- well –undeniably angry at Lucretia for the things she did, especially the choices she made without consulting her family first, but she would never _hate_ her. She's pontificating. This is what Lucretia thought, whether it makes sense or no. It's actually rather incredible to see this from Lucretia's point of view. Rather frightening.

She turns the page. Keeps reading.

_Hello Lup! How are you? I'm doing fine. I'm doing great!_

She turns the page.

_Dear Lup._

_I don't know why I write anymore. I hate writing._

Lup's mage hands tremble. She almost puts the book down, again, for the fifteenth time, because the emotions Lucretia felt in her twelve years alone are dripping into her lap like molasses. She has to calm herself down for a minute anyway, because the gross description of cutting off her own arms-- sewing her mouth shut, _holy shit_ –it's a lot and Lup can't deal. The apology in the next entry feels hollow.

She reaches the last few pages of the journal, and it seems like there should be a lot more. She reads the next entry.

Lup wants to give Lucretia a hug. She wants to cry. As a lich, she can do neither of those things. She turns the page instead.

She finishes the notebook.

It's basically a suicide note, courtesy of the end of the world, dedicated to Lup. How could Lucretia have known whether her plan would have worked or not? She couldn't have. But she counted on her own death in either position.

Lup uses one of the few abjuration spells she knows to put the journal in a demiplane. She needs a pencil and paper. She needs to make sure Lucretia is alive.

Lucretia is alive-- Lup can feel her heart beating, sluggish, in the infirmary. She looks dead, which almost sends Lup into a panic.

“Mrs. Lup-- It's fine, she's gonna be fine, please calm down.”

Lup whips around, finding herself face-to-face with the very boy detective she'd read about in the journal. A few of the entries were cute little stories about him, the one time he fell asleep in Lucretia's office or the night they sat on the quad together, talking about Neverwinter. Not many, though, because at that point in the journal Lucretia had stopped writing so frequently.

“Hey, Angus,” Lup says. She forces herself to reign it in.

“Why are you so, uh, emotional, anyway?” Angus takes a step into the room. “I know she passed out, but Merle was with her. She's fine now.”

“Yeah,” Lup says, drifting towards the bed. She's breathing steadily, in and out. She doesn't explain. The kid doesn't need to know. 

She was right in her journal – she looks so old, now, so different. Lup reaches out to touch her face, pretending she can still do that without phasing through it.

Then she turns around, leaves the room. She needs a piece of paper.

 

_Dear Lucretia,_

She doesn't know what to write.

She puts it down in her desk drawer and follows Barry to bed.

 

Months pass. Lup gets a new body, Lucretia gets a house planetside and spends most of her time on the moonbase anyway.

Days are full, full of hard work for the Raven queen and soft evenings alone with Barry or out with the boys. She finds herself laughing more than she thinks she ever has, happy and content. She almost forgets about the notebook, till one evening, Barry points it out again.

“Lup, what's that?”

“hmm?” Lup rolls over, watching his finger, pointing at her shelf of the bookshelf. She'd pulled a book down earlier, and the notebook had come with it, a little, so it's sticking out from the other books. She frowns.

“It's a diary someone gave me,” she says. She throws back the covers and goes to push it back in. She doesn't want it to fall off the shelf, and she certainly doesn't want it to fall open to that one entry where Lucretia describes how she wants to remove her own hands. Or the entry about Lup hating her. Or any of the entries. She doesn't want Barry to get caught up in it too, even though it'd probably be good. They could stage an intervention. They could go to Lucretia's house and talk to her and scold her for her bulshittery.

Lup finds herself pulling the journal off the shelf instead of pushing it back in. She runs a hand over the pages. They've crispened up in the twelve years they were used, making crinkling noises as she holds it.

She puts it back on the shelf and lines the spine up with the other books. It still looks oddly out of place, the only thing on the shelf which is a pale, Lucretia blue.

“Is it important?”

Lup hums. “Yeah, it is, but like, I don't know. I'm working on it. I need to give it back to her.”

“Is it Lucretia's?”

“Yeah.”

Barry hums. He doesn't ask anything else, though, and Lup's thankful. She climbs back under the covers, and they go back to sleep.

 


	3. Visiting hours

It's a cold sweat day. That's how Lucretia would define it, anyway. It's a day when she woke up chilly and damp all over, rolled out of bed, and kept being chilly and damp all over. She's showered three times. It hasn't helped. She feels gross and sticky and cold but putting on layers would surely make it worse.

Instead, she sits at the kitchen counter and doodles in her notebook, her feet swinging. She writes the date in the corner. Anniversary of something, she's sure. It's been fifteen years since the day of story and song, and she hasn't changed much at all. She draws herself on the page – a her that looks like she's still twenty-three, the age she'd been for a century. She wants to erase it as soon as she's drawn it, but instead she turns the page and doodles a little half-gnome eating a sandwich. She imagines his tail flicking up and down.

She likes to tell herself that she still looks like she did fifteen years ago because she looked old fifteen years ago, and not because of some glitch. She likes to believe things are normal, and plans on believing things are normal as long as she can. Maybe she'll even still die relatively young. She's not sure how hard she wants that, now, but she wants it at least a little bit.

Lucretia drinks another cup of coffee, eats some pgorp, and stares at the stars out the window.

She goes to bed.

She wakes up at three in the morning, shaking, from a dream about the hunger breaking free. Coming back. Eating the world. She rolls onto the floor – not because she's frantic, but rather, because she knows it'll wake her up and jolt her senses back to sensible places – and groans into the carpet. It's the easiest of her dreams to deal with, because at least if the hunger came back and tried to destroy them she would die still having loved ones.

Not that she really has loved ones. Well, there's Magnus. Merle. Magnus is getting older.

Lucretia rubs her forehead and sits up. She reaches into the bedsheets and drags the bulwark staff out, leaning back against the bedframe. She'd forced herself to take a few days off from running the Bureau at Avi's vehement behest, and she's utterly, completely bored.

She can see the edge of a picture frame poking out from behind her dresser, and because she has nothing better to do, she pulls it out and looks at it. It's the portrait of the crew she'd painted in cycle twenty one, hardly altered compared to when it was first painted. The only noticeable difference was the hole in the middle where she used to be. About eight years ago, in a fit of self hate, Lucretia had taken paint to it, edited herself out entirely. She doesn't exactly feel like a part of the crew anyway, anymore. Even in that cycle, she'd been off to one side, watching. She's the outsider in the group. It's no wonder she defected, no wonder she turned out to be the bad apple.

The paint is a little raised where she used to be. She runs a finger along it. She had to repaint in Magnus's arm, which had been slung over her shoulder. It looks a little off, because the paints were quite literally from a different universe than the ones she used to touch it up.

Whatever.

She shoves it back behind the dresser and goes looking for a new outfit. Her clothes are gross from yesterday, from sweating in the night. It doesn't seem like a particularly relevant or worthwhile punishment to make herself wander around in sweaty clothes.

Lucretia makes herself breakfast and then doesn't eat it for several hours, eventually picking her way through her cold egg and toast. She stares at the closed curtains under some pretense of staring out the window.

She doodles a little more in her notebook.

She's just about ready to go back to her bed and lie down and stare at the ceiling when she hears a knock at the door.

Instead of heading to her bedroom, she walks into the living room to see who's there.

It's Lup. She's clutching something small to her chest, her ears turned back like she's either nervous or worried, or both. Lucretia studies her face for just a moment. Worried. Nervous. Okay, both. She looks more closely at the thing in her hands. It's a journal. She doesn't look long enough to figure out which one it is, because Lup speaks.

“Lucy, how ya doin?”

Lucretia looks back at her face. “Oh, fine, you know.” Lucretia shrugs. “Do come in. Would you like some coffee?”

“Do you drink coffee at three in the afternoon?”

“Well, some people drink coffee after dinner, so I don't think it's the worst thing.” Lucretia gestures to a living room seat. “Well?”

“I'm good, babe, thanks.” her face is a little more relaxed.

Lucretia helps herself to a cup and sits down across from her. She realizes then which journal Lup is holding. “I take it you're here to talk about… that.”

“Yeah, uh, I'm actually...” Lup giggles. “Well. A little surprised you're so okay. That I didn't get any unhappy calls after reading this, cause. Well, ya kno.”

“Because of the ending?” Lucretia stares at her coffee. Little wisps of smoke chase each other towards her face. “Yes. I'm, ah, sorry about that. I didn't have high hopes. I definitely didn't expect Magnus and Merle to be so openly okay with just, me, I don't know, I know they don't appreciate what I did but I...” She takes a shuddering breath. “You know.”

“Lucy? You know you can talk to us if you feel like, bad, right?”

Lucretia hums noncommittally. She doesn't think she actually has that right.

Lup puts the journal down on the table and works her way around to the couch, sitting down next to Lucretia. “Hey. You do. You can come talk to us. I'd rather you did.”

“It's fine, Lup. I'm a coward, nothing… nothing extremely distressing is going to happen, I'm sure.”

“A coward? Lucretia, have you--” Lup looks a little stunned, shakes herself. “No, of course not, you're smart, you know we love you.” Lup's eyes have drifted back towards the journal. Lucretia has a feeling they're both on the same page, but she knows Lup might be thinking of something not quite so dramatic. There's layers to this shit.

If Lup is afraid she might be harming herself, she should know the answer. As little as Lucretia wants to admit it, as little as Lucretia wants to change, she's known for years that she's unhealthy, and done little about it.  
“You don't have to love me if it hurts you,” Lucretia laughs. “And uh. I'm not sure what you mean, but I have, well, I've.” She sips at her coffee. “I've got a history, one could say, but I've always gotten better.” She's not sure how much Lup is reading from this. She's not sure if she wants to tell Lup about her suicide attempts explicitly, ever, at all. So she stays quiet. She doesn't tell Lup about all the days she spent feeling sort of foggy, like she might be dying, like the century, only to wake up the next day weak and wobbly but fine. She knows what it feels like to die. She hasn't done that, not this time. She hasn't died since the century. Not once.

“Can I touch you?”

Lucretia is a little taken aback. “Yes,” She says. She realizes in retrospect that Lup may be planning to hurt her. She doubts it, but she doesn't know what Lup is thinking.

Lup takes her coffee out of her hands and puts it down on the table. She wraps her sturdy arms around Lucretia's frame and holds her tight. “You don't have to do that to yourself,” she says.

“Hm,” Lucretia replies.

“Aaaaanyway,” Lup drawls, leaning back again. “I left a letter in the back of your notebook. I thought you should have it back. And hey, I really appreciate that you were thinking of me for all those years. Woulda thought you might have tried to forget me.”

“Forget?” Lucretia's mind tries to wrap itself around the word. “You.” She pauses. She stares at her hands.

“Oh shit, I didn't mean, hey, Lucy? It's fine. I know you wouldn't forget me.” She stands up. “Uh. I kinda ditched work for this so, I gotta go back.”

“I'll see you later, then,” Lucretia says, still a little lost in the word forget and all the sickly sweet implications. She knows Lup just needs an excuse to get away. She doesn't blame her.

Lucretia sees Lup to the door.

 

She opens the notebook. A plain piece of paper is folded in the back.

She unfolds it.

 

_Dear Lucretia._

I had leftover sausage for breakfast. Bar and I went to the grocery store. We kissed, it was nice. It's always nice kissing Barry. We went to work.

I'm writing about today, because there was a little girl that we had to kill. I had to kill a little girl, Lucy. She'd been performing necromancy in her basement, trying to resurrect her parents. And she had so many notebooks, just full and bursting with notes. So many notebooks that it reminded me of your room on the starblaster. Remember how you had like, fifty bazillion notebooks shoved in boxes under your bed? You had to label them by decade. Meanwhile this little girl has them scattered all around her floor, and we had to kill her.

I'm pretty sure Barry had just as hard a time with that one as I did. She didn't look like you, but she was like you in a way that was just too much.

Barry said it reminded him of himself as a kid, too, and that scared him.

I wonder what you were like as a kid. Bet you were cool.

Anyway, Lucy, I read your journal. I read every entry, even the painful ones. Did you really have to write about how much you wanted to cut your hands off? Nah, probably not, but at least you apologized. Honestly, though, it still scares me. You're just so willing to spill all your thoughts down onto the page like spaghetti from a bowl. And girl do you have so many thoughts. You're just overflowing with thoughts.

Lucy, I want this note to be something good to read, but you have no idea how panicked I was when I finished your notebook. I had to go make sure you were alive immediately. I mean, you were, but like? Holy hells of fuck Lucy. I love you and I want you to be okay but I'm so busy lately I don't know if I can take the time. Please like, call me? We can set up a something. Or talk to Magnus. Or Merle. Just make sure you aren't alone all the time, because as far as I can tell being alone fucked you the fuck up.

I know you're the lonely journalkeeper, that's your thing, but it doesn't have to be. You're Lucretia first, and Lucretia can mean whatever you want.

This all seems real stupid to me now. I don't want to reprimand you for how you feel, especially since I don't know if you acted on those feelings like, ever. But Taako does the same thing. I, just, Hey Lucy? Go make yourself a hot chocolate right fucking now. That's what's happening! I don't care what you're doing and I don't care if you already have a hot chocolate or literally any other beverage. Go make yourself hot chocolate.

I'm gonna throw you the biggest birthday party this year and there's nothing you can do about it, by the way. Love you lots, biggest kisses,

Lup.

 

Lucretia laughs.

She doesn't have the ingredients for hot chocolate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prequel to [No Halo!](http://archiveofourown.org/works/12919635) if you want more story and you haven't read it, it's worth checking out!  
> And for once this is a legitimate prequel, rather than just something that takes place in the same universe. Wow.... Tuna, did you organization???//?//?/?


End file.
